


Pax

by Magical_Destiny



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Karen and Frank reunite after the finale, Karen meets Micro, but also soft Frank and Karen, let Frank take a nap 2kforever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 11:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12958191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magical_Destiny/pseuds/Magical_Destiny
Summary: When a tape showing the illegal detention and torture of the Punisher hits WikiLeaks, every reporter worth their salt has a field day. Karen Page, however, calls in sick and goes looking for a different story altogether. Namely, whether Frank Castle is okay.





	Pax

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [mrstater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater) for betaing. <3

Like every other newspaper in the city, the _New York Bulletin_ offices are in a frenzy. Even over the phone, Karen can hear the pandemonium. She feels a distant pang over missing the unique blend of caffeine, cigarette smoke, and desperation that always accompanies the breaking of a bombshell story, but she doesn’t have second thoughts. Karen leaves her apartment with David Lieberman’s address scribbled on a slip of paper and hails a cab. 

She gives the driver the address, and something in her expression deflects any further attempts at conversation. She’s grateful to avoid the ordeal of small talk. The suspicion in Ellison’s voice when she’d called in sick had left her drained of words and the desire to speak them. He hasn’t looked at her the same way since he asked whether she knew Frank was alive—and she lied to his face. She’ll have to reckon with that eventually. For now she contents herself with the silence and watches the skyscrapers dwindle into homes and trees as they leave the city behind. 

The cab stops in front of a white house with green shutters and a _welcome_ sign beside the door. She asks the driver to wait and steps out at the corner of two streets populated by bare trees, old and comfortable houses, and a few distant figures bundled in coats and walking a dog. Dead leaves skitter past her feet when the wind blows; Karen crosses her arms against the cold. 

For a moment, she’s not so far away, standing between another cab and another house in a quiet neighborhood—a house with no lights, no sound, and the name _Castle_ on the mailbox. She blinks away the memory and focuses on the click of her shoes against the front walk. 

At the door, her knock is answered immediately. 

“David Lieberman?” she asks, but she already knows the answer. She’s seen his picture. Judging by the flash of recognition on his face, he’s seen hers as well. 

“Miss Page,” he says. “Please come in.” 

David Lieberman doesn’t look like a hacker who’d turned himself into a ghost for a year and given the NSA, CIA, and Homeland Security a run for their money. He’s tall, but not intimidating. If anything, he looks rumpled and vulnerable in his socks and well-worn sweatshirt. Family pictures cover the walls around him, showing a wife, a daughter, and a son. The kids look happy in the pictures. And so very, very young.

“Who is it, David?” A woman’s voice calls down the stairs. 

“It’s, uh—" He pauses to consider. “It’s a friend. This’ll just take a second, Sarah. I’ll be right back.” 

“How do you know me?” Karen asks quietly. She needs answers—and the process of asking questions is uncomfortable more often than not—but the last thing she wants is to disturb the peace in this house. 

“I guess I don’t, really,” Lieberman replies. “But someone I know reads the _Bulletin_ religiously _._ ” 

Through an open doorway, a kettle whistles. Lieberman sighs. 

“One second,” he says, and disappears through the door. “I was making tea,” he calls to her, underscored by the clink of a mug. “You want some?”

“No,” she answers. When he returns, his raised eyebrows alert her to the fact that she still has her arms crossed vice-tight. 

“I guess you’re here about Frank,” he says, and his expression is cautious but friendly. Karen thinks he has kind eyes. She’s gotten good at noticing that type of thing.

She nods. “I know you were working with him,” she starts. “He told me. Is he—"

And suddenly her throat is too tight and her eyes are burning. 

“Oh, oh no,” Lieberman starts, which is a less than comforting beginning, but when his eyes go wide, it’s with concern and not grief. She begins to relax even before he shakes his head and gets his words in order. “God, yes, he’s fine. A little the worse for wear after recent—“ he pauses to consider and winces, “—events. But he’s fine. I saw him just a couple of days ago. I invited him to dinner, but he wouldn’t come.” He says it lightly, despite the regret in his eyes. The laugh that rattles out of Karen’s throat is dangerously close to a sob. 

“Can you tell him to call me? I saw the WikiLeaks video. It looked—“ She struggles with the image of Frank tied to a chair and leaking more blood than ought to fit in a human body. Hears the wet _smack_ of repeated blows punctuated by grunts of pain. Her shudder is involuntary. “It looked bad.” 

“It did look bad,” Lieberman says softly. “I’m sorry you saw that. He wouldn’t have wanted—" He trails off with a rough sigh. “I can do better than tell him to call you,” he says, and pulls a phone from his pocket. It’s hard to read the text message upside down, but she manages. 

_Karen is here,_ he sends. The screen lights up instantly with an incoming call. 

“You never call me back this fast,” David says in lieu of a greeting. “Yeah, she’s okay. She’s _fine,_ Frank. She’s asking if you’re okay. Yeah, she’s right here.” He offers the phone and drifts back into the kitchen when Karen takes it. 

“Hey.” At the sound of Frank's voice, the tension she’s been carrying in her shoulders relaxes. He’s okay. After telling herself as much all day, she can finally believe it. 

“Hey,” she echoes back. Her voice isn’t as steady as she wants. 

“You saw the tape,” Frank says, reading her too well. She hears the _Goddammit, Karen_ in his tone. “You shouldn’t have watched that.”

“Probably not,” she agrees. “But the leaked tape was news…and it was _you._ I didn’t really have a choice.” 

“Sorry you had to see that.” He sounds normal. Not at all like he was nearly beaten to death in the last few days. Karen is so relieved she could cry. She bottles it up for later.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” she says. It’s an inadequate distillation of everything she’s feeling, but it will have to do for the moment. She moves on to her most salient questions. “Are you somewhere safe?” 

“Yeah.” 

“And you’re okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re taking care of yourself?” 

“I’m fine, Karen.” Almost as though he can hear her disbelief through the phone, he adds an emphatic, “I swear.”

She shakes her head, not remotely convinced. “Can you meet me somewhere?”

“What’s wrong?” His voice hardens suddenly. “If somebody’s giving you trouble about me—“ 

“No, nothing like that,” she says. “I just want to check on you.” 

A beat of silence. “Okay,” he says at last. “Tell me when and where.”

“My place. Tonight, if you can.” 

After everything she’s been through—that they’ve _both_ been through—it feels pathetic that she needs to see he’s okay with her own two eyes. The silence between them is growing heavy, so she adds, “I promise not to blow your head off,” just so she can smile instead of fighting tears. Frank’s laugh is short but genuine. 

“I appreciate that. That hand cannon of yours is no joke.” She can hear his smile. 

“Might chew you out, though,” she adds after a moment. The pent-up worry is leaking into her voice, cracking it under the weight. 

“For what?” Frank asks. The words alone could have been anything from a joke to a sneer, but his tone makes them solemn.

“For nearly getting yourself killed like that. For not letting me know you were okay.” The pain in her voice blunts the edge of the accusation. 

“Fair enough,” Frank says softly. A brief pause, and he sighs. “I’ll see you tonight.” 

“Okay,” she says. Lieberman must hear the finality of the word. He reappears immediately to take the phone. 

“Hang on a second, Frank,” he says, and lowers the phone to rest against his chest. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says by force of habit. “I’m just glad he’s alright.”

“Me too.” Lieberman lingers for a moment, uncertainty in his eyes. “You’re sure you don’t want tea?”

“No, but thank you. I’ve got a cab waiting.”

Lieberman nods. “Tell Frank to come to dinner sometime. You’re invited too.” 

She nods and offers the best smile she can manufacture on short notice. She’d like to talk to the man who’d called himself Micro at some point, but the likelihood of an on-the-record interview is slim to none given the classified nature of his actions and the government’s responses to them. Her eyes slide to the baby photos over Lieberman’s shoulder and she knows she won’t be pressing him to disclose anything that might put him at any further risk. He and his family have suffered enough. 

“Thank you,” she says. “I might take you and your family up on dinner sometime.”

They walk to the door. The wind feels like ice after standing in the warmth of the house. They say their goodbyes and Lieberman shuts the door behind her. His voice still carries clearly when he asks, “You need any help getting ready for your date tonight, Frank?”

Karen smiles despite herself. The hacker once called Micro seems less like a former fugitive and more like a real flesh and blood person now that she’s seen him, his family photos, his home. It’s funny, Karen thinks, the difference a little insight can make.

***

The sun is bright on the pavement, but it’s still cold as hell. Frank can feel the chill more sharply than usual, almost as though it’s managed to seep into each abrasion in his skin and every crack in his bones. The icy air chafes and burns at his bruised lungs, which means he can’t even breathe without hurting. It’s possible, he thinks to himself, that he’s getting too old for this shit. 

The sun is setting by the time he sees Karen’s building ahead of him. He waits by the dumpsters until it’s nearly dark, tugs his hood low and his scarf high, and looks at his feet instead of the lobby security cameras. When he makes it to her floor, she answers the door before he can knock twice. The look on her face tells him he looks even worse than he feels. 

She pulls him inside, shuts the door, and looks him up and down, one hand pressed pensively to her lips. “If I hug you,” she says, finally, “Will I hurt you?”

He shakes his head. It’s a lie, technically. But her grip is careful and he braces his ribs, so it doesn’t hurt all that badly. 

“Did you break a rib?” she asks when she pulls back. Her fingers linger at his side, brushing over the ridge of a bandage. 

“A rib or five,” he says, keeping his voice light to counter the concern in her eyes. She’s practically grey with it. “They’ll heal up pretty quick. Ribs do that.” 

Karen’s face crumples. She’s too compassionate for her own good. The downside of empathy is absorbing pain without taking it away from the person suffering. Shared pain doesn’t lessen anybody’s burdens—it’s just pain twice over. He can see it gathering behind her eyes and moves to redirect it. 

“You decorating for Christmas?” He steps into the apartment, careful to minimize the pronounced limp that hasn’t healed yet. Karen blinks and turns to look at the bare Christmas tree in one corner of her apartment. It’s nearly black in the fading sunlight. There are brand new boxes of lights and ornaments stacked beside it. He thinks of the boxes upon boxes of homemade ornaments he’d had, once upon a time. Popsicle stick frames and painted porcelain, all made by the kids. He doesn’t have them anymore. He wonders why Karen doesn’t have anything personal, either.

“I was thinking about it,” she says, but he can see that the only thing she’s thinking about are his damn ribs.

He makes an effort to keep the pain off his face as he eases down onto her couch, but there’s no way she missed the slow deliberateness of his movements. She’s silent when she sinks down beside him. He recognizes her expression. It’s the one she wore in the elevator when he had glass in his arm and a hole in his head. He could barely stand on his own—and she looked at him like he was breaking. Or like she was. 

“Frank,” she whispers. Just that. The pain in her voice sends adrenaline through his blood like a gunshot. He would protect her from that pain if he could. But there’s no way in the world to shield her from it. Especially not when he’s the source in the first place. 

“I’m fine, Karen.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I’ll live.”

“I’m not sure you understand me. You look like _shit_.” 

“I feel like shit too. At least I match.”

“You must be in a lot of pain.”

“Not the worst I’ve had.”

She’s getting nowhere fast, so she changes tactics, reaching for his hood to survey the damage herself. Her knack for digging out the truth is showing. He forgets, sometimes, that she’s a reporter. Maybe because she wasn’t when he first knew her. 

Karen pushes back his hood and stares blankly at the bruises scattered across his cheekbones and jaw. He’s glad she didn’t see the immediate aftermath. She would’ve hated it. Her fingertips trace along his cheek and over the darkest bruise, where the swelling had only just gone down. She brushes her thumb along the edge, following the motion with a kiss that’s light as air. Always trying not to hurt him. 

“I wish I could take the pain away,” she says. For such a sweet sentiment, it sounds like a guilty confession. 

He knows she would. She’s cried for his children, his wife, even for him. She’d absorb it all and try to help him carry it if she could. But Karen doesn’t know that empathy is crippling in the end. Doesn’t know that when you love someone and suffer with them, one day you die with them too. 

“I wouldn’t let you take it,” he says, and gently removes her hand from his cheek. “You don’t deserve to feel that.” 

She doesn’t answer—or doesn’t have an answer—but their fingers are still tangled when their hands come to rest between them. Frank can’t quite convince himself to pull away.

“Thought you were gonna let me have it,” he says after a moment. His smile pulls painfully at the bruised muscles of his face. “I was terrified the whole way here.”

Karen smiles, which is all he wanted. “Guess I’m too tired,” she says, and she sounds like it. Her voice is thin and brittle with exhaustion. She sinks back until her head lolls against the cushion. “I haven’t been sleeping,” she murmurs.

“Nightmares?” 

She nods, eyes shut. 

“You and me both,” he mutters, and leans back too. 

They sit quietly and watch the shadows creep across the city. The view from her window isn’t half bad. The roses he’d brought her as a signal are on the fire escape, fluttering lightly in the cold wind. 

“They’re still alive.”

“Hm?”

“The flowers. How’d you manage that?”

“Effort,” she says. “But maybe I can’t take all the credit. Maybe they wanted to survive.” She sighs and slumps against his shoulder like the fight’s finally gone out of her. It hasn’t, of course. He knows it never will.

“Am I hurting you?” she asks quietly. 

_Always_ , he thinks. But when he speaks, he only says, “No.”

She shuts her eyes and smiles faintly. “I heard Frank Castle is still at large.”

“You heard right.” 

“So who are you, then?” 

“Pete Castiglione. Or so I’m told.”

“Nice to meet you, Pete.”

“Nice to meet you, Karen.” 

Her breathing grows deep and even. He looks at the bare Christmas tree, the last rays of light through the windows, the roses on the balcony. They’d been white when he bought them on the street; now they’re pink and violet in the sunset. Their days are numbered, will to survive or not.

It’s been a long time since he watched a sunset, come to think of it. He feels something like fear at the thought of sitting still long enough to see it. He’s been feeling that a lot lately. Saying it too, especially in Curtis’ meetings. 

_I’m scared._

It’s the truth; he’s terrified. Of the slow sunset, of the silence in the apartment, of the woman asleep on his shoulder. Good things, all of them. Far too easy to ignore or neglect or lose altogether. 

But Curtis never lets a negative statement sit like a landmine ready to blow. He disarms it with careful words every time.

_They teach us that fear is a handicap,_ he’d said, _but I don’t think that’s true. Fear is the most natural emotion there is. And if you can feel it and do what needs doing anyway, it doesn’t mean shit. It just is. And so are we._

Frank rests his head against Karen’s and watches the shadows lengthen until he can barely see a damn thing. Not Karen’s face or the flowers in the window. Not what tomorrow will hold or even what he wants it to. Of course, he can’t see the stars either, not from where he’s sitting. But he knows they’re out there. And maybe…

Maybe that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Karen (aka my brain after watching The Punisher): You don't have to write Kastle fic.
> 
> Frank (aka my heart): What do you mean? What do you mean I don't have to write Kastle fic?! My OTP is real, but they didn't see each other in the finale. I CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN TO THEM, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?
> 
> So, uh, leave a comment if you enjoyed? ;)


End file.
